


Training

by agent_florida



Category: Firefly, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Red vs. Blue
Genre: Crossover, F/M, M/M, Mash-up, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-12
Updated: 2010-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/agent_florida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s close to exam time for the Companions-in-training at Hogwarts, and everybody’s more than a little tense. Church tries to talk Tex out of something she might regret; Grif tries to keep his sister academically on track.</p><p>Characters from RvB set into a universe that's a mash-up of Firefly and Harry Potter. I don't know either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Training

“Have you seen my sister?”  
  
Simmons looked up from his calligraphy practice to see a very irritated Grif encroaching on his personal space. “No.”  
  
“Do you at least know where she is?” Grif slapped a hand down on the table, right into Simmons’ work.  
  
Simmons wasted no time in closing a hand around his wrist and lifting Grif’s hand out of the still-wet ink. “What did I say to you about interrupting me while I’m working?”  
  
Grif’s mouth twisted into a shit-eating grin. “That it was manly and impulsive?”  
  
“Yes, precisely. Except the exact phrase I used was  _don’t_.” It was the work of a few seconds to pick up his wand, point it at Grif’s palm, and mutter a quick cleansing spell. As it was, this given set was unusable now; he might as well give Grif the time of day, since he didn’t seem to be leaving the Gryffindor common room any time soon. “Why do you need to know where she is?”  
  
Grif pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger, and Simmons was slightly amused to see that the ink wasn’t entirely gone from his fingertips. “She’s got OWLs coming up at the end of the month, and if she doesn’t pass at least two, she’ll get kicked out of Companion training.”  
  
“And this would be a bad thing because…?” Simmons hitched up the sleeve on his blouse again as he re-wet his calligraphy brush; no sense in dirtying such exotic fabric.  
  
“I keep telling her not to embarrass the family. I mean, it’s not like I can stop her from – doing what she does – but if I could just channel it, get her to study, then she wouldn’t have to work in a brothel, unlicensed and off of the Ministry’s medical care.” He sighed, flopping his body down into the cushions across the table from where Simmons was doing his work, arms behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling.  
  
Simmons just raised an eyebrow. “You know, sometimes people just aren’t cut out to be Companions. You ever think about that,  _ni hunqiu_?”  
  
“Oh, you definitely know where she is,” Grif figured out. “Why aren’t you telling me?”  
  
A whole host of reasons, really, none of which Simmons cared to elaborate on and most of them having to do with Grif himself. Grif was so busy with pilot training recently that the only times he came to Simmons had something to do with finding out where his sister was. “Why can’t you just let her be?”  
  
“Because she’s my  _sister_ , Simmons. I fought like hell to get her into this school, and now she’s not even studying, just using her ‘natural talents’ or whatever her excuse is this week.”  
  
“Just because she has a few more… extracurricular liaisons,” Simmons chose his words carefully, “than your average Companion-in-training…”  
  
“Yeah, well, who’s her ‘extracurricular liaison’ today, then,  _pigu_?” Grif asked, glaring at Simmons as he crossed one leg over the other.  
  
Simmons sighed; he might as well tell him at this point. “She said she was going to Hufflepuff to see one of the studying surgeons there.”  
  
“You mean Doc, right? That idiot who keeps failing his NEWTs?” He let out a sound of disgust, idly jiggling his foot up and down. “I’m going to kill her.”  
  
“You don’t seem too motivated there,” Simmons noted, working on one of the more difficult characters.  
  
“Eventually,” Grif amended. But he still stayed lounging on the pillows, keeping to himself in amicable silence while Simmons did his work. To tell the truth, Simmons appreciated the company, as long as Grif wasn’t being too obnoxious. He especially appreciated the extra practice he could get out of some of the techniques he learned in his Companion training, but Grif never needed to know about that.  
  
Grif wasn’t even supposed to be here right now, though. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”  
  
“ _Bizui_ ,” Grif sniped back, just getting more comfortable on the cushions and closing his eyes, inhaling the incense in the room deeply before sighing. “Don’t feel like it. Besides, gotta work up the energy to kill my sister.” But he opened one eye to ask Simmons, “Is it all right if I hang out here?”  
  
“Just –“ Simmons sighed; he might as well. “ _Fine._ ”  
  
\--  
  
“You look good.”  
  
He’d better think so – it had taken Tex the better part of five hours to prepare her garments for today’s examination. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, her body strikingly perfumed, the barest slivers of smooth skin showing beneath soft and exotic fabrics. Her veil hid most of her face, but left her kohl-rimmed eyes exposed, all the better to draw in potential clients and money. She’d always been graceful, and her feet made no noise on the worn steps leading from the girls’ dormitory to the Ravenclaw common room.  
  
Church was waiting for her, lounging on a couch in front of the tea set she had been practicing on for the last few days. He wasn’t her examination today, but she knew he wished he was. His eyes were wide as saucers as she made her way to him, keeping her body language subtle but inviting. It had taken her two years to get down this walk, and damn if she wouldn’t milk it for all she was worth. It was too easy to sidle up to him, and through her wraps she could feel him pressing up against her hip, already hard, wanting her. “Much better than the uniforms they give the rest of us,” he murmured, smoothing down the fabric over her breasts.  
  
She smacked his hand away; he knew better than to muss her garments when she was about to take an exam. “They told us each one had a unique ability,” she mused, running a fingertip along the rim of one of her teacups. “I’ve been trying to figure out what mine is, but –“  
  
“Tex.” His voice was soft, and when she looked back at him… was that concern on his face? “You know, you don’t have to do this.”  
  
But she’d already dedicated so many years of her life, so much of her time, to studying to become a Companion – and part of it had been at Church’s insistence. Now, with the NEWTs upon them, he was backing out? Besides, she enjoyed this – the thrill of having men under her spell was appealing in a way that went beyond words. “I’m not doing this because I have to,” she reminded him.  
  
“It’s just that…” He sighed, and she could tell, from the tension in his spine, that he had been holding onto this information for a while. “There’s all these rumors about what the Alliance is doing with the Ministry of Magic – things they’re making the Companions do these days.” He shrugged, his ice-blue eyes pleading with her. “Just sounds a little… crazy.”  
  
“You know I can’t talk about it with you.” She didn’t want her hands to be shaking now. She didn’t want to quit when she was so far ahead. But her Companion training pulled through, and she kept her composure.  
  
“I know.”  
  
She brought up a hand to caress his knee gently. “Technically, you’re not even supposed to be here.”  
  
“I know.” Somehow he sounded defiant and defeated all at once, and she marveled at herself once again that she could have fallen in with someone like Church.  
  
“Yes, I think it best you go,  _pilot._ ” The words were spoken in a British accent, and when Tex looked up, she could see one of her examiners, Professor Wyoming, lingering in the doorway to the Ravenclaw common room. “We’ve got real training to do here. Perhaps you should get back to yours. Learn how to fall out of the sky properly.” His chuckle was cruel.  
  
“Yeah, thanks,” Church grumbled, pushing himself off the couch and slinging his school bag over his shoulder. “I was already leaving.” He had to push his way past the professor to make his way out of the common room, though, but before Tex could watch the conflict take place, Church had something else to say to her from over his shoulder. “Tex, I…” Then he roughly shouldered Wyoming out of the way. “Just be careful.”  
  
“ _Fangxin_ ,” she called after him, but it was too late; the door had already closed behind him, cutting off his mutter of ‘totally becoming a browncoat.’  
  
“Ah.” The professor stepped closer to Tex and her tea set, and she stood, bowing in front of him. “Now that our little distraction is out of the way,  _baobei_ , we should begin.”  
  
\--  
  
Two hours later, Grif was dragging a rather disheveled-looking girl back into the Gryffindor common room by the ear, giving her a lovely bit of haranguing with almost more Chinese swears than English. “ _Gaoyang zhong de guyang, meimei,_  you really want to get thrown out on your  _pigu, bu huihen de pofu_?”  
  
“Ow, that  _hurts_!” she complained, pushing him away and trying to pull her garments on correctly. “I was just trying to study –“  
  
“ _Chuiniu_ ,” Grif said roughly, grasping her by the ear again. “That didn’t look like calligraphy and it didn’t look like your tea ceremony,  _jienhuo_.”  
  
Simmons, for his part, was still guiding his brush along his paper, trying to ignore the fight, but when Grif called his sister a cheap slut, that was too much. “Grif –“  
  
“What?” both siblings answered him at once, two sets of brown eyes staring him down.  
  
Years of Companion training had taught him to suppress his instinct to slap his palm to his forehead, but he could still feel his own irritation simmering below the surface of his superficially calm posture and movements; it showed more in his voice than anything else. “Dex, let go of your sister.” He hated having to mother these two.  
  
A few more minutes of defiance, that angry look still on his face, but then he let go. His sister scampered up the stairs to her dormitory, saying something along the lines of ‘you’re mean and I hate you,’ but that was normal for her when she didn’t get her way. “You could have backed me up,  _hundan_.”  
  
“You know I don’t like getting involved in your fights.” Yet he always seemed to be roped into them one way or another.  
  
“She’s just upset again,” Grif sighed. “I keep telling her, we have to stay here. It’s not safe out there with the threat of civil war between the browncoats and the Alliance. She can get an education, learn a trade, get a job that thousands of other people would envy – and she insists on fucking up every opportunity I give her. I’m tearing out my hair here.” Simmons had to give him at least that much – he was literally tugging on the ends of his hair, so hard that his forehead was turning white.  
  
“Is there anything I can do?”  
  
“You know, come to think of it, there is,” Grif said, rounding angrily on him. His hand slapped down on the table again as he roared in Simmons’ face, and Simmons was thankful that his work had had time to dry by now. “You could, I don’t know,  _back me up_  when I tell her to stay in school and do her homework.”  
  
“I can’t tell her what to do,” Simmons reminded him, trying to stay calm as an antithesis to Grif’s sharp rage. “I can only be a good influence.”  
  
“Well, could you maybe be a good influence a little harder? Tutor her or something?” Simmons was about to shake his head no, but then Grif’s other hand came down onto the table, covering the hand he had been gripping his calligraphy brush with. Grif’s face was a little too close, his light brown eyes only inches from Simmons’ nose. “She has exams in two weeks. She really needs to pass.”  
  
“You want me to tutor your sister.” Did Grif never think before he opened his mouth?  
  
“And here I thought you were training to be a Companion,” Grif said, smirking. “No feelings, just business.”  
  
“We choose our clients.” And sure, one of the Grifs, but –  
  
“So choose to tutor my sister.” And then the look in his eyes changed subtly, his anger softening. “Please. It would mean a lot to me.” His fingertips were pressing into the back of Simmons’ hand, and he knew this was as close as Grif would get to begging.  
  
This was the second time today he’d rolled his eyes and sighed. “ _Fine._  I’ll tutor your sister – for whatever she needs. I just hope it’ll be worth my while.”  
  
“Once she passes her OWLs, I’ll help you study for your NEWTs,  _dong ma_?”  
  
It was a dirty deal, but Simmons was getting used to those whenever a Grif was involved. He nodded, and Grif’s fingertips dug into the back of his hand just a little harder before he backed out of Simmons’ space, slinging his schoolbag over his shoulder as he headed out of the common room. In and out of his life like satellites, and he smiled quietly to himself as he started drawing up study plans.


End file.
